WATT WORKS FOR ME - Monica Greenwood

The former GB coach has leapt from trackside to podium, winning this year's National Road Series

- David Bradford

How did you first get into cycling? 

Initially, I was just a kid on a mountain bike riding with my friends, building jumps and smashing around the streets. When I was 14 or 15 my mum was diagnosed with cancer – she was treated and is fine now – and cycling was my way of getting away from the uncertainty. There weren’t any mountain bike clubs, so I started going to the Velodrome in Manchester and got into track cycling.

Why did you switch from racing to coaching?

Like many female athletes reaching their late-teens, I’d discovered life and boys, and needed to earn money. I’d come third at junior nationals but I wasn’t on the national programme, and there was no [development] infrastructure. I trained as a journalist, but while I was qualifying I started coaching with my local club and then decided I wanted to be a coach full-time.

Fifteen years later, you’ve returned to racing – why now?

I’d been gradually increasing my training volume since 2018, and did some local races on the quiet. The hardest bit was making my racing more public – because of my job [as GB women’s endurance head coach], it would have been embarrassing to do badly. During lockdown, I was furloughed for a while, and again my way of coping with the uncertainty was by riding my bike. Over the next couple of years, as Podium coach, we won several titles including the Madison [with Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny] at the Olympics – a career pinnacle. Next I wanted to find out what I could achieve as a rider.